Vacation House Hunting in the South of France

It’s becoming an annual tradition to take a summer trip down south with my girlfriends and this year is no different. We’re six friends with a similar budget (around 65 euros a night per person), looking for somewhere charming for one week with a pool, a good kitchen for cooking and space to dance under…

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The Palatial Ruins of the First Western Black Monarchy

Once known as the ‘Versailles of the Caribbean’, its hollow ruins are one of the few lasting remnants of a forgotten royal court – the first Black monarchy established in the Western world that rose from the ashes of the Haitian Revolution. The brief reign of the first and only King of Haiti is both…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. DXLVI)

1. Scottish Island For Sale with an opening bid of £80,000 Deer island is located on the west coast of the idyllic Scottish Highlands, uninhabited rugged, approximately 11 acres. More details found here. 2. This Website where Strangers Upload Recordings of their Windows Views Sounds a little bit like MessyNessyChic’s own Style Spy! Open a…

Practice Your French While Time Travelling through Paris

In my ongoing quest to help bring you to Paris by any means, today we’re diving into one of my favourite resources for revisiting la vielle ville (the old town). The ‘Institut national de l’audiovisuel’ (INA) is a repository of all French radio and television audiovisual archives and within their Youtube channel, you can find…

This Mind-Bending Artist Can Take Up Residence in Our Curiosity Cabinet

Let’s pretend for a moment, that in our virtual cabinet of curiosities, we had an imaginary artist-in-residence programme. And on the top shelf of our giant cabinet, we kept a little guest studio to invite exceptional talent that speaks to us in ways that only a truly peculiar type of artistry can. Armando Veve would…

Paris Apartment Renovation Reveals Hidden Revolutionary Frescoes

It was supposed to be a straight-forward renovation project for Paris-based architect Agathe Marimbert. Her clients were first-time buyers, a young couple who had recently moved into their second floor apartment of an 18th century building in the 10th arrondissement before deciding it could use an upgrade. Work was in full swing; Agathe’s plans for…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. DXLV)

1. This listing for a converted 1960 era Atlas E Missile Site Located two miles southwest of Kimball, Nebraska. Unclear whether it’s still for sale. Found here. 2. Girl Finds Secret Room In Her NYC Apartment 3. The Art Nouveau tomb at the Jewish cemetery in Budapest The Schmidl family mausoleum, one of many grand mausoleums of…

Some of Nature’s Best Work is Hidden Away in Siberia

We’re constantly looking for untapped corners of the globe. The road less travelled. Proof that tourism hasn’t conquered everything. Today that search took us to the Altai Mountains, in the least-populous republic of Russia, where the frontier meets China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan. Genetic research has suggested this Siberian landscape was the birthplace of Native Americans. Settlements…

And how would you fare quarantined inside one of these things?

If you know us, you know we love weird architectural history from the height of the utopian design age, but the idea of spending lockdown inside a radical sci-fi social experiment might take some convincing. This odd cluster of spherical houses is known as Bolwoningen, built in 1984 by artist Dries Kreijkamp as part of…

Run Your Own Vintage Bistro in the South of France this Summer

Nope, sorry, I refuse to stop imagining that I live in the past. This time – inside Grandmère Léone’s village bistrot in Provence. It’s about that time of year when Parisians start looking south to plan a summer escape from the city, and on my annual holiday house hunt, I stumbled upon this little gem,…